Monthly Archives: November 1990

So vast is the expanse of Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, so audience- involving its outlay of violent, palpable emotion, that any performance that gets through the work unscathed is bound to seem at least skillful. Even so, the performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Kurt Sanderling on Thursday night must rank as an extraordinary […]

The history of serious progressive music in the Soviet Union is only now coming into focus. It’s a history of oppression, of composers harrassed by official governmental forces, denied access to music from the West, and commanded to straitjacket their own compositions to fit the needs of the state. It is also the story of […]

Michael Milenski has done it again.On paper, the opening offering of Milenski’s Long Beach Opera’s 13th season, introduced on Wednesday night and repeated next Sunday afternoon, may have looked like marking time. Given the company’s reputation for innovative fare, a revival of Mascagni’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” may have seemed like warmed- over turkey; Massenet’s “La Navarraise,” […]

Aaron Copland turned 90 on November 14, and the event has been widely and wisely celebrated. It is doubtful, however, whether a more loving and imaginative tribute has been staged anywhere than this week’s Monday Evening Concert at the County Museum.The turnout was one of the largest in the series’ history; nearly every seat in […]

It didn’t take much imagination to predict that the stars would be in their proper places for this past weekend’s Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts. With Murray Perahia, our most serious romantic pianist, on hand to play Brahms, and Kurt Sanderling, one of the last of the old-school classicist, involved with Beethoven, Friday night’s program (repeated […]

A small office building stands at the corner of Tampa Ave. and Roscoe Blvd. in Northridge. From its half-timbered, archaic look, it might have been designed by and for a gang of Munchkins. Instead, it houses the headquarters of DCC Compact Classics, which is the outfit you talk to whenever you’re looking for recordings from […]

The Los Angeles Philharmonic is many kinds of orchestra, depending on the circumstances. For the young conductors, it is quirky and edgy; under Andre Previn, it matches his grayness; for Kurt Sanderling, it is somehow transformed into a noble, resonant ensemble in the best European manner. Thursday night at the Music Center, Sanderling began his […]

The ultimate test of quality for any chamber-music ensemble, and for its audience as well, is the slow movement from any of Beethoven’s mature string quartet. The sublime blend of vision, passion and mystery, the way Beethoven combines so few notes to signify so much: these stand as the definitive statement on the power that […]

The Leningrad marvel continues. Thursday night’s concert at the Music Center, the second of four by the visiting Leningrad Philharmonic, once again drew a capacity crowd and gave it plenty to cheer. Mariss Jansons, the orchestra’s associate conductor was in charge, remembered here for the Tchaikovsky Festival concerts he led with the Los Angeles Philharmonic […]

Word has it that the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra of the U.S.S.R. — to use its full title this once — is some kind of stupendous performing organization. Word, this once, is right.Its history is splendid enough. Descended from the orchestra of the St. Petersburg court, the ensemble was anointed the Leningrad State Orchestra in 1917 […]